Real leadership means never having to say youre the boss. There is no surer sign of weakness and insecurity than the repeated assertion of your own power and authority. This truth has somehow eluded Barack Obama. Hence the unending (and off-putting) self-puffery in his recent presidential press conference.

Again and again, the president felt obliged to remind us of the centrality of his own position in responding to the Gulf oil spill, as if this would counteract the horrible pictures of thousands of gallons of oil gushing out of the ocean floor. Quoth the president:

The American people should know that from the moment this disaster began, the federal government has been in charge of the response effort. . . .

Make no mistake: BP is operating at our direction. Every key decision and action they take must be approved by us in advance. . . .

..It is my job to make sure that everything is done to shut this down.

All of this is wildly over the top. No one blames Barack Obama for the Gulf oil spill. No one is asking him to swim down and plug the hole. Nevertheless, his response to the crisis is revealing. It points to several deeply troubling aspects of the Obama presidency.

Most striking is his unbounded faith in governmentand an equally unbounded faith in his own abilities as a self-proclaimed transformational leader. Then there is his contempt (not too strong a word, in my judgment) for the private sector. Government, he seems to think, is a supermagnet for supersmart idealists from academia, while the business world is populated by dullards motivated by a crass and shortsighted desire for profit.

..This holier-than-thou, smarter-than-everyone-else ivory tower elitism has unfortunately become a defining element of the Obama presidency.

Twice he lauded the contribution that Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, could make to recovery efforts in the Gulf. Never mind that Chu is known for his research in cooling and trapping atoms with laser light. These are the presidents exact words: Chu brought together a team, basically a brain trust, of some of the smartest folks we have at the National Labs and in academia to essentially serve as an oversight board with BP engineers and scientists in making calculations about how much mud could you pour down, how fast, without risking potentially the whole thing blowing.

His killing all offshore drilling for 6 months is tantamount to keeping all vehicles off the road until it can be found out why Ford Pintos are exploding in accidents.

Make no mistake: the rigs that are “temporarily” shut down will not stay idle. They will be sent overseas to places like Angola or Brazil, never to return.

He has permanently caused job losses in the oil industry.
And at 1,400 people to support each drilling rig, it will be a lot of losses, particularly for those along the Gulf Coast(coincidently, those who did not vote for him).

What annoys me about the President is that he’s not smart enough to know that intelligence is not the only factor a leader must have. When his majority in the Senate is reduced and he loses the House, he’s going to spend a very frustrating two years. He has burned many bridges with people who otherwise would have tolerated him.

It also shows the lack of respect for individuals decision making, He knows best how to run our lives.

This morning on FOX Karl Rove said Energy Secretary Steven Chu, (a Nobel Prize-winning physicist) didnt realize the last cap attempt had vents in it to control the pressure and was concerned when oil was still flowing through the vents.

"Clearly, it does not occur to him that the oil companies have a powerful motive to self-regulatein light of the physical threat to their own workers and the huge potential damage to the long-term viability of their companies that awaits anything less than an exceptional safety performance."

This is the part that always gets me. It's the idea that businessmen are too stupid for any sort of long-term goals/aims and only seek short-term success (usually in the form of evil profits) when, in reality, it's the liberal dolts like the current occupant of The White House who are projecting.

Great article. I’m noticing an increasing problem with know-it-all liberalism. These left-wing politicians think they know everything about every subject and believe they’re smarter and wiser than centrist independents and conservatives. They think they’re morally superior to everyone else and people to the right of them politically are just driven by crass materialism and have no concern for the environment. And they totally underestimate the private sector and how much brilliant work gets done in corporate America. I am so tired of the shallow superficial understanding of global warming theory within the current administration. Will they ever give any serious thought and consideration to the thousands of highly qualified scientists who are skpetical of global warming theory and the powerful evidence against man-made global warming?

16
posted on 06/07/2010 12:48:43 AM PDT
by socialism_stinX
(He didn't invent fresh brewed coffee, but he perfected the art of sipping it during tennis warm-up.)

Will they ever give any serious thought and consideration to the thousands of highly qualified scientists who are skpetical of global warming theory and the powerful evidence against man-made global warming?

I think they know -- this is a dishonest scheme to redistribute wealth and take money from the US.

I think a lot of people in the poor countries don’t believe in global warming theory and they’re just using it as a tactic to get money out of the rich countries. But most US liberals who support cap & trade seem to actually believe in the theory or at least believe in the cause even though they know nothing about the scientific theory of global warming. A lot of American liberals remind me of bratty kids who think they know more than the adults (even though they don’t) and when these brats don’t get what they want they start lying, cheating, and distorting the truth in an attempt to get their agenda implemented. That’s what they’re doing right now with the global warming issue. In fact, a lot of adult liberals probably were the bratty kids I remember from grade school.

This administration doesn’t understand that a “scientific consensus” in support of man-made global warming doesn’t mean anything, because very few scientists have much detailed understanding of climate science and even “climate experts” don’t understand ALL of the hundreds of factors that affect the earth’s climate. When you look at scientific papers on global warming, they only analyze a small number of the many factors affecting climate. The computerized climate models built by the UN are filled with hundreds of equations and thousands of lines of computer code which can (and I’m sure do) contain a few bad assumptions that invalidate all of the output of these models. A simulation model has to be near-perfect to be worth anything and I strongly doubt that the UN’s models are near-perfect. Global warming theory is easily 20 times more complex than anything I’ve ever looked at in science and the supporters of this theory are grossly understating the complexity of this science and grossly overstating the level of confidence that they should have in the output of their climate forecasting models.

As I wrote yesterday, if cap & tax is implement by this congress it will be a train wreck for the US economy and a political disaster for the democrats.

19
posted on 06/07/2010 10:04:24 AM PDT
by socialism_stinX
(He didn't invent fresh brewed coffee, but he perfected the art of sipping it during tennis warm-up.)

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